Сердца трех / Hearts of Three

Even so, he talked like a native, and he would be robbed like a native if there was anything of value in the heavy box deposited with the jailers, Henry concluded, ere dismissing the incident from his mind.

In the guardroom, a scant fifty feet away from Henry’s cell, Leopoldo Narvaez was being robbed. It had begun by Pedro Zurita making a profound and wistful survey of the large box. He lifted one end of it to sample its weight, and sniffed like a hound at the crack of it as if his nose might give him some message of its contents.

�Leave it alone, Pedro,’ one of the gendarmes laughed at him. �You have been paid two pesos to be honest.’

The assistant jailer sighed, walked away and sat down, looked back at the box, and sighed again. Conversation languished. Continually the eyes of the men roved to the box. A greasy pack of cards could not divert them. The game languished. The gendarme who had twitted Pedro himself went to the box and sniffed.

�I smell nothing,’ he announced.

�Caballero!’ sniffed another of the gendarmes. �The old man’s father was more like to have been peddler of rotten fish on the streets of Colon and his father before him. Every lying beggar claims descent from the conquistadores.’

�And why not, Rafael?’ Pedro Zurita retorted. �Are we not all descended?’

�Without doubt,’ Rafael readily agreed.

�And were the ancestors of those that survived,’ Pedro completed for him and aroused a general laugh. �Just the same, almost would I give one of these pesos to know what is in that box.’

�There is Ignacio,’ Rafael greeted the entrance of a turnkey whose heavy eyes tokened he was just out of his siesta. �He was not paid to be honest. Come, Ignacio, relieve our curiosity by letting us know what is in the box.’

�How should I know?’ Ignacio demanded, blinking at the object of interest.

�You have not been paid to be honest, then?’ Rafael asked.

�Merciful Mother of God, who is the man who would pay me to be honest?’ the turnkey demanded.

�Then take the hatchet there and open the box,’ Rafael drove his point home. �We may not, for as surely as Pedro is to share the two pesos with us, that surely have we been paid to be honest.